Woody Harrelson scored what might have been the line of Emmys night when he told “True Detective” co-star Matthew McConaughey: “I’m grateful you had all the plagiarized lines!”

In case it might have gone over your head — McConaughey himself suggested it might have been too “inside baseball” when the crack only received a few laughs in the crowd — here’s an explanation.

Harrelson was referring to plagiarism accusations lobbed at “True Detective” creator and writer Nic Pizzolatto a few weeks ago. Mike Davis and Jon Padgett, in a post on the Lovecraft E-Zine website, argued that Pizzolatto lifted and paraphrased, without credit, parts of horror writer Thomas Ligotti’s“The Conspiracy Against the Human Race” in writing character Rust Cohle’s (McConaughey) oft-quoted philosophical diatribes.

HBO and Pizzolatto denied the accusations, and several bloggers criticized Padgett and Davis’s assertions. Indeed, Pizzolatto had previously cited Ligotti as an influence on Cohle’s dialogue and worldview in Q&A posts on Speakeasy and the blog Arkham Digest.

Pizzolatto discussed Ligotti and other, similar literary and philosophical influences on “True Detective” in February after a Speakeasy essay in late January had drawn comparisons between Cohle’s dialogue and Ligotti’s writing. Padgett, the founder of Thomas Ligotti Online and a nascent horror writer himself, helped with research for the essay, which lauded “True Detective” for being potentially revolutionary TV by making its breakout character an anti-natalist.

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Padgett and Davis asserted in their recent post that Pizzolatto only ended up discussing Ligotti because of the original Speakeasy essay, saying he did not cite Ligotti’s influence beyond the subsequent Q&A. Their detractors, however, pointed to Pizzolatto’s Q&A with Speakeasy as enough of a citation.

“True Detective” received 12 Emmy nominations overall, and its director, Cary Joji Fukunaga, won during Monday’s ceremony. There’s no way to tell whether the plagiarism uproar cost the show Emmys for Pizzolatto’s writing or McConaughey’s performance. It’s more likely that the “Breaking Bad” farewell tour spoiled the party for the freshman HBO drama, as well as its placement in the series category instead of miniseries, but Harrelson’s joke showed that it was on some minds in Hollywood during television’s biggest night.